Williams
In the blink of
an eye it was 3013. It was a whole
millennia in the future so the village Williams found herself in seemed too
primitive. The 21st century
time traveler wondered if she’d been transported back in time rather than
forward as she’d intended. She wasn’t
totally sure that she was using the technology properly. After all, the man who designed it had died
four months ago and hadn’t left detailed instructions on how the machine was to
operate. Yep, that was her husband. He was always so secretive. Williams suddenly became self-conscious off
her style of dress that, a few moments ago had seemed so normal, but now
appeared obscure in comparison with the citizens that bustled about the little
clearing.
She
assumed that she was in a residential area.
Small ten by ten huts lined the dirt road on which she stood. Everything was dirt, actually; not a green
thing in sight. A group of bedraggled children
ran past, sending dust up onto her white suit pants. Their hair was at least to shoulder length,
even the boys’. “Don’t they have
scissors in the future?” Marissa
Williams asked herself, knowing that she’d never let her little boy, Jordan, go
around with hair like that.
Marissa
then felt silly standing in the middle of the dirt field. She ventured off to the side to speak with a slender
woman who had wispy, black hair going down below her waist.
“Hello,
can I ask a favour?” Marissa asked
somewhat uncomfortably.
The
woman cocked her head, “Hillue, don’t yew tolk d’outrageousl!”
The
woman had an accent that Marissa didn’t recognize. Perhaps the English Language had changed in
the thousand year period she’d skipped.
“Yes,
I suppose I do,” Marissa responded, insecurity about her own peculiar accent
was creeping in, “Can you tell me if this is the biggest city centre
around. Is there a place with more
advanced technology?”
“Eff
yew jaunt over seas to Great China, yewl spot thi most tanteunous technologi en
the sphere but rit here yewv been looking at thi mest advanced en this land
mass.”
It
took a second for Williams to decode the woman’s smooth sentences but it
finally clicked in. So this was the most advanced city in North
America? Impossible! Marissa could hardly believe. Before she could protest the woman’s
statement, a booming voice broke out from the skies. It was something Marissa could only describe
as an intercom system.
“Thi
rain scheduled for this day will commence en thirty seconds. Proceed to yewr hive, eff yew will,” said the
mysterious voice.
“Where
is that coming from?” Marissa did not
realize she was screaming.
“Thet
is thi ski voice warning us civils to get endoors. D’ew have a hive?”
“A
hive? No, I don’t even know what that is!”
“Come
with mi,” the woman said, gently grasping Marissa’s arm and guiding her inside
the little hut. They had to duck to get
through the door.
Marissa’s
eyes grew wide with astonishment. The
“hut’s” interior was impossibly large.
Directly in front of her was a stair case that could’ve fit in the
largest sky scraper she’d seen back in twenty thirteen. Outside the house, the pointed roof had hardly
looked six feet off the ground but now, to Marissa’s utter disbelief, she stood
in an interior larger than any mansion she’d heard of in the 21st
century.
“Thi
rain will stop et four thirty. Would it
please yew to join mi for hot tempters in thi mean time?” The woman asked this politely as a child descended
the everlasting staircase and took the woman’s shawl to hang it up on a wall
hook.
Marissa
could only nod.
She
didn’t know how it happened but she suddenly found herself sitting at a round
table with at least ten other women.
They all sat in silence, taking sips from the hot liquids that pooled in
big round mugs – mugs that could only be classified as bowls with handles.
“Dew
yew like yewr tempter?” one of the
women, the bolder type, asked Marissa.
“It
smells good,” she smiled, still not brave enough to try the bright blue
beverage.
“I
em sore displeased with myself for I never requested yewr name,” said another one
of the women, who was a little plumper.
Marissa
had to think for a moment, “Marissa Williams.”
The
room exploded with laughter, “Shay’s got a since of humour, this one!” a lady
bursted out, almost spilling her hot tempter on her lap.
“What? What’s so funny about my name?” Marissa had
to stretch her vocal chords to overpower the din of laughter.
Silence
fell on the group and the women began to look from one to another in deep
concern. Worry built up in the young
time traveler’s mind. Did she have some forbidden name? Had things really changed tha –
Her thoughts were interrupted by a small,
timid-looking girl who looked to be in her teen years, “Yewr not jostling us?”
“I’m
dead serious, if that’s what you mean.”
“Are
yew the Marissa Williams?” The same girl inquired.
“I’m
sure it’s a common name,” said Marissa sensibly.
“Nay,
nay. Not since the Marissa Williams began her clock jumping. A person would hardly dare to mutter the
name.”
“Clock
jumping?” Marissa tried to fit the
scrambled pieces of her time-traveling puzzle together in her head.
“Don’t
tell mi yew don’t know thi tale!”
Marissa
softly shook her head which cued the group of solemn women to tell Marissa
their history. A crazy woman, they
explained, from around the 21st century discovered time travel. The women went into details about how
historians infer that she wasn’t always insane but that her first trip to the
future had caused some instability and she began to search the timeline for
what she entitled “the answer”. The
woman, whose name was Marissa Williams, finally settled in the year 2520 where
she overthrew the government and established a new system called Williamism –
very similar to communism and tyranism.
As Marissa
listened to the story told from the women’s trembling lips, she couldn’t
believe that this is what time traveling would do to her. Besides this, some aspects of the story were false. For one, it wasn’t she who’d discovered time traveling;
it had been her husband’s life work. Before
Michael’s death, he made the wish that she would be the first to go on a
mission through time. Her trip here was
only a fulfillment of his will and these women tried to say that it was the
darkest time of their history. Marissa’s
mind now only wanted to think of her husband.
She thought of how brilliant he was.
He was a master at science though he never came off to her as
geeky. He had a gentle way about his
words that would calm the wildest storm.
It took a great deal of effort on Marissa’s part to listen to the rest
of the story.
“That is when
Great China took thi place over. Their
domain is this whole sphere,” a woman finished gravely.
“What about
Michael William’s? Do you know about
him?” The widowed woman plead for an
explanation without thinking.
“Of course, he’s
our silent structure.”
“What? What is that? Where is he?” Marissa jumped from her chair, still delirious
from the confusion of shifting a whole ten centuries into the future.
“Master Michael
is everywhere. He’s our… what would you
call him? – our president.”
“Let mi explain,”
another women interjected, “Wi needed to select new government after Mrs.
Williams was brought down. With cloning technologi our studiers brought back thi
greatest mind in history: Michael Williams.
He then established thi greatest system of government in history. For a while, things went smooth as
rinoleaf. Eventually, however, people
got tired and wanted excitement. A huge
revolution destroyed thi money exchanges and made room for Great China to take
over. Williams then had to be brought
underground. Several thousand more
clones were made so that thi bureaucracy can be run bi him and him alone. Many Michael’s have been assassinated but
they still remain. He rules our land
justly.”
Thousands of him… was Marissa’s
thought. She still hadn’t gotten used to
the thought of life without her husband and now they say that there are
thousands of clones. Are they really her husband, though, or are they just soulless
bureaucrats?
“China thinks wi
are primitive. Wi keep them thinking
that,” The plump woman explained, “Our houses, they look small but yew can fit
a hundred families in one hive. Wi grow
only thi food we need for a tenth of the population. Thi rest live off of nutritious tempters. Our secret structure is stable and cannot be
destroyed. Thi environment bubble wi
live in lets us live as though the sphere wasn’t completely ravaged by pollution. Michael is a truly good ruler.”
“Is that all he
is to you?” Marissa spat in disgust, “Is
he not a man? Can he not feel love and
hatred as you and I? Yet you trap him in
a secret, use him so you can have a pleasant life. You disgust me.”
The women looked
shocked. Taciturnity settled on the room
until a woman, who Marissa hadn’t noticed before, spoke up, “Wi disgust yew? Are you not thi insane woman who destroyed our nation with radical
acts in the mid-twenty-fives? Do yew no
longer claim to be her?”
Twenty eyes
stared holes into Marissa until her fear became anger. She tossed the table over, shattering
bowl-mugs and sending the tempters onto the synthetic flooring. A twinkle of choler flashed in her eyes and
she burst out of the house into the pouring rain. Had four thirty not already passed? She ran, maddened, through the mud. She sunk up to her knees in the thick swamp
that the rain had made of the streets.
She cried out, “If only things could be as they were. Before all of this, I was free.”
A flash of light
appeared to Marissa. She could still
feel the cold rain and clinging mud on her body but before her, in an unreal
display, stood her late husband. He
looked just as he had before he’d died.
His cheeks were sunken from radiation poisoning and heavy bags weighed
under his eyes to show his many nights without adequate rest.
“Hello traveler,”
the radiant figure spoke, “You’ve triggered the failsafe action of the
device. It has been detected that
information that you’ve obtained during your expedition could prove harmful to
both you and the timeline.”
Marissa tried to
speak with the calm vision of her husband but she finally concluded that he was
nothing but a recording. He didn’t even
know who he’d be talking to when he taped it.
The recording
continued, “You now have an option,” Marissa cringed. She hated decisions. “You can chose to either
proceed back to your original time with the knowledge of this experience or these
events will be wiped from your memory to preserve the time line and your own safety. Time travel may have serious mental effects
and now is your only opportunity to erase this trip from your memory. Say ‘repeat’ if you would like to hear the
message again.”
Marissa couldn’t
help but smile. She loved her husband
and wished she could spend more time in 3013 to see if she could find some of
the clones. However, the recording hadn’t
mentioned this as one of the options.
Should she keep the memory and risk losing her sanity? She shuddered at the thought. No matter how much she wanted the answer, she
knew that she was not the one to find it.
“Send me back,” she
said weakly, “Take it all.”
“Thank you for
participation in the Williams project.
Have a nice day,” The recording said.
With another flash of light he was gone.
Tears began to tumble down Marissa’s soaked cheeks and, as soon as she
blinked to clear her eyes, she found herself back in her house. She wore a soft bath robe and was holding a
cup of coffee in her hand. For a moment,
she felt like shouting out all that she’d seen but the memories began to
trickle away from her. She’d been put
back to 2013 about a day after she’d left originally so in the room with her
sat eager research assistants. Their
faces all took on a blank expression as they noted the confusion resting on
Marissa’s.
“You took the
fail safe, didn’t you?”
Marissa nodded because
that was all she remembered.